James Bond 007: Nightfire

Why do Bond games seem to be so hard to get right? The ingredients
are all there waiting to be put in the mix, and the hard work of
getting the player to identify with a lead character and the role
they fulfil is practically done for them, yet only one developer
has ever managed to do it right - Rare. Every time a new Bond game
is released, it seems appropriate to line it up against Rare's
standard-setting N64 classic GoldenEye. So how does the
Gearbox-developed Nightfire stand up against that stalwart of Bond
gaming?

"Bond, James Bo-" "Oh shut up"

Some housewarming this turned out to be

As you may have
already guessed, Nightfire doesn't even come close to rivalling
GoldenEye. As a bog-standard FPS, it fares quite well actually; it
looks reasonably good, there's a compliment of neat gadgets,
characters are well animated and locations are varied, fairly
detailed and well constructed. As a Bond game, though, it fails
quite miserably.

The main fault is an almost complete lack of purpose. Certainly,
there are mission objectives to fulfil, but you never really end up
going out of your way to achieve them. Instead, you pelt through
each level, dispatch some villains, reach the and discover that
you've completed objectives without even realising it - all I
remember doing was pulling a few levers and shooting a bit.

The levels, while each at first appearing quite detailed and
exhibiting a commendable level of variety, are completely static
and barely exhibit any kind of interactivity. Your progression
through them is deceptively linear through the clever use of locked
doors, but the opportunity occasionally arises for a bit of
imagination in how you approach a situation. The game pulls this
kind of thing off with varied success - take the first mission
where you need to get inside a heavily guarded mansion on the side
of a mountain for example. Parachuting onto the roof of a guard
tower, M radios in and informs you that you may be able to enter
the compound on board a goods truck that's heading up the road. We
try that, and fail, so we change tack and decide to try and sneak
our way in. Spotting a cable attached to the tower and offering a
way across the road and up to the mansion, we clamber up and sure
enough Bond starts swinging his way along the cable. Brilliant!
Except... he won't get off. No matter how hard we try, Bond just
dangles there refusing to do anything other than wriggle up and
down the cable until we give up and start the level again.

This kind of sloppiness is glaring throughout Nightfire, and it
quite frankly ruins an already pale gaming experience. Any attempt
at stealth tactics is usually marred by completely unresponsive
controls and enemy soldiers with super-human vision, capable of
spotting you lurking in the shadows from 300 yards, in the dark, in
the middle of a snowstorm. Attempt to peer around the corner and
spot any lurking enemies, and see if you're lucky enough for the
lean function to even work at all first time - it usually takes six
or seven presses. And forget about trying to lean while crouching,
it's impossible. I honestly can't understand how these completely
obvious flaws were ignored.

Sigh...

Zzzz

The use of Q gadgets also leaves a lot to be desired. For the most
part, they're employed to assist in mundane tasks, which simply
drive your linear path forward. Using your laser watch to melt
padlock after padlock, the grappling hook to hoist yourself up onto
a balcony when every door has been found locked, the x-ray specs to
peer into a room before you enter and easily bump off the
frustratingly stupid guards - nothing particularly interesting.
Weaponry is exactly what you'd expect, with the requisite pistol,
machine guns, shotgun, grenades, rocket launcher and so on,
although it does feel a bit stupid to have Bond walking about with
an enormous great futuristic rocket launcher perched on his suave
frame.

Oh yes, I didn't mention the AI yet, did I? There isn't any.
The sentries happily stand around and watch their colleagues'
demise, or take a shot in the leg or the arm without bothering to
find out who did it. When they're not ignoring their own impending
doom, they occasionally see fit to inexplicably turn on each other.
Spectacular.

Despite looking reasonable for the most part and having some
genuinely well produced elements - the introduction movie and music
in particular is superb, suiting the style of the license
tremendously - Nightfire systematically fails to engage you in
practically every respect. You just don't feel like you're Bond,
and including any number of easy, ridiculously forward,
large-chested women and having you take pictures of them (yes, you
do) isn't going to make it any more Bondlike.

The problem lies in the way you coast through the levels without
any real sense of progress or achievement until you realise you're
finished. Garnish this enormous flaw with a smattering of smaller
niggles in the unresponsive controls, bad AI, a tacked-on
afterthought of a multiplayer mode and some ridiculous bugs and
you're left with another extremely unsatisfying attempt at the Bond
license. Next!

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